Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-11

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries, primary and secondary schools close for two months or more in the summer holidays.

What is the value of long school holidays?

What are the arguments in favour of shorter school holidays?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Holidays during schooling its essential for they mental health and recollect all strength of further good performance in study. Its happen in several countries that they are providing wider summer vacation. Long-term and short-term vacation both have own benefits for a many reasons.

To embark with, if students get long duration for the vacation they are able to plan any long team activities, as like in two or in three months learner can learn many skill-swimming; dance; yoga; and crickets or anything in which they want to improve them self. Furthermore children ought to manage to go for the trip and can enjoy them time with family and friends. Hence, this thing helped them to reduce educational stress and burden. For exemplify, in India students get two months holidays and study found that when they came after vacation their academic performance its better than previous academic performance.

On the contrary, some schools are not supporting long-term vacation because they believe short-term vacation has more advantages than long term vacation. Moreover, its also has benefits as like, if they got long vacation they are not able to re-focuses in they study. In addition, they should engaged in their performance is school compared to holiday thoughts. For instance, in Finland students got one month vacation and they are doing good and be active at on topic of study.

On a concluding note, having long-term vacation helps to students to refresh although short-team vacation facilitate learner to stay attentive to the education side.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses both parts of the prompt: the value of long holidays and the arguments for shorter ones. However, the development of these ideas is somewhat superficial. For example, the argument regarding 're-focusing' in the second body paragraph is vague and lacks clear explanation. While the position is generally clear, the supporting examples, such as the mention of India and Finland, are brief and could be better integrated to illustrate the points more effectively. To reach a higher band, you should aim to expand on your reasoning with more detailed explanations rather than just stating the benefits.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is organised into logical paragraphs, each with a clear focus. You use some cohesive devices such as 'To embark with', 'Furthermore', and 'On the contrary'. However, some of these transitions are non-standard or slightly awkward, such as 'To embark with' instead of 'To begin with'. Additionally, the referencing is occasionally unclear, particularly in the second body paragraph where the pronoun usage makes it difficult to follow the argument. The progression of ideas is generally logical, but the flow between sentences could be improved by using a wider variety of linking words and ensuring that pronouns clearly refer to their intended antecedents.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is adequate for the task but lacks the precision and variety required for a higher band. There are several instances of awkward phrasing and word choice, such as 'recollect all strength' and 'short-team vacation'. You attempt to use some topic-specific vocabulary like 'academic performance' and 'educational stress', which is positive. However, there are frequent errors in collocation and word formation that occasionally make the text feel unnatural. To improve, focus on learning common collocations and ensuring that words are used in their correct grammatical form within the context of the sentence.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors throughout. Issues include subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'Its happen', 'students got'), incorrect article usage, and awkward sentence construction (e.g., 'as like in two or in three months'). While these errors do not completely impede communication, they are frequent enough to be noticeable and detract from the overall quality of the writing. To achieve a higher score, you need to focus on basic grammatical accuracy, particularly with verb tenses, pluralisation, and the correct use of prepositions.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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